My dad worked for Caterpillar Tractor Company in Peoria Illinois when I was born but shortly after I was born he left to join and Air National Guard squadron there, and I have still remember being carried out there when very young and then growing up (until I was eight) around P-51s, then F-84Fs then F-86s as the squadron changed aircraft types. I remember my dad taking me out there and letting me sit in the pilot seats of those aircraft, and also a Lockheed Electra that was kept there...

I can still hear the sound of the Rolls Royce Merlin engines as the planes went over my house in Pekin Illinois...and I still have zinc chromate primer in my veins...To me there is just nothing, and I mean nothing like the smell of those hangars... I love that smell also the smell of Jet fuel from the jets...While I don't fly real planes, and RC is as close as I get...I still love them!! Oh...and I live less than 200 yards from Reid Hillview Airport in San Jose, CA. where I have seen such classic planes as the Howard "Pete" and other great historic aircraft.... There are also Extra 300s, and a tricycle gear "yak" (sorry I don't know which model) also a "Wilga" with its gangly gear and radial engine that is just "so ugly it's cute"... There are also a couple of T-28s, Stearmans (I got to fly in one of those a number of years ago) and also got to go for a ride in and fly a "Starduster ll")

Oh..and the first airplane I ever flew in (while sitting on my dads knee) was a restored Stearman flying out of a farm landing strip in Green Valley Illinois...

Here's a question. What did it for you? What made you fall in love with airplanes? I'm trying to remember, but I was so little. When other kids were checking out "Curious George" from the school library, I was checking out books about the century fighters. When I read, in the 3rd grade, that those giant radomes on top of some planes produce lift, I designed a corporate jet based on the shape, and this was way before I found the book on lifting bodies. As best I can recall, I think it was the first pic I ever saw of an SR-71 that made me flip my lid for airplanes.

My dad and his brother. As kids, we cousins visited the NATS. Dad flew free-flight (Buzzard Bombshell) competitively. My Uncle loved monoline speed. Later we did free-flight, control-line, and early RC. The one time Dad won the control-line combat meet (Indianpolis), we didn't go. I have his RC Sea-Cat in my work area.

Best thread ever... period. Honestly though, this just goes to show that we're all a bunch of serious aviation enthusiasts. Modeling is just one outlet, and DAGs build is like a pinnacle to modeling just like getting to chat with Scott Crossfield would be a huge exclamation point for any lover of aviation. (Yes DAG, in the modeling world and to your fellow modelers, your 36 is veeeeeeeeeery cool!). I'm definitely drooling over the stories too. And I want a clubhouse with heat and AC and surround sound.... eeeeaaaaaaaahhh. Sorry... got "way cool" overload for a sec there.

Here's a question. What did it for you? What made you fall in love with airplanes? .

I was 11 yrs. old when my dads friend took us on a flight from Medina Ohio to Morgantown W.Virginia.Morgantown is on top of a mountain and has a 1000ft. cliff at the end of the runway.It could have been 2000ft. I was only 11.It was the coolest thing I have ever seen.I was instantly hooked.Going to the Cleveland Air Show every year with Dad didn't hurt eather.

to ska2000As for aviatio in general, I'd have to say it was when I was a bout 8or 9 and in the early 5o's there was lots of activity at the local n.a.s. Quonset point R.I.it was home port to the uss Lake Champlain and asw was expanding rapidlt. I think just about every day as I played in the school yard across the sttreet there would be many sqaudrons of corsairs and ad1 skyraiders with that huge radial pounding away I was some thing that will stay with me till I passon. There were other planes too, P2 neptunes s2 trackers and of course the predecessor of the hawkey it was an s2 with a radome on its back I believe they called it a willy fudd. Strangly I never saw jets til I got in the military and boy did I see some f4 phantoms , ra6 vigilantes, a7 corsairs, e2a hawkeyes,and my personslal favorit, the a6 intruder. sighta and sounds 'Ill never forget. navee8or

ska 2000, I'M hoping dag gets back with an update, but to kepp things rolling, Sveral years ago I attended a fun fly at the discover rc rc club on cape cod in mass. I was flying my goldberg ultimate the engine died ad I had to a dead stick and because the wind was at an angle to the strip. I side slipped it in. Immediately after that a gentlman of color approached me shook my hand and said ''Great job I didn't known you guys knew how to do those. Just about then a real plane flew overhaed I looked upand he said'eat your heart out" I was then that I saw the patch on his jacket an I was informed that he was a member of the tuskeegee red tails. I said to myself wow, now I feel. that I'm in the aviation brotherhood. navee8tor

ska2000, great question. For me I grew up along side LAX (Los Angeles Int'l) and I simply cannot remember a time when I was not fascinated by airplanes. In grade school I'd ride my bike to a big empty field where these "old guys" were flying rc aircraft and I said to myself one day I'm going to do that. Well now I'm one of those old guys and though new to the hobby I'm having a blast...I may have to get a second job to help pay for it but so much fun and new friends as a plus!
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Hey, I'm probably one of the youngest in this thread, but I have a fascination with all things aviation, especially planes from this era.

I was born on Eglin AFB and spent the first two years of my life sitting in my stroller with flight line earmuffs over my head (too big to go over my ears...) watching the blue angels fly over, along with everything else that flew out of that base.

like sneasle im also a youngin....21. i have always dreamed of flying since i was 4 years old my parents said i started talking about flying airplanes. now my dream is coming true at the university of north dakota at the john d. odegard school of aerospace science. im majoring in commercial aviation. i am almost done with my commercial multi engine course. within a month i should be a commercially rated instrument multi engine pilot. im pretty excited. been flying rc for the past 10 years and have loved every second of it! this thread is full of some amazing people and one amazing airplane!! keep up the work dag we are all rooting for you!!

My father once told me that the first word that I said was "Airplane". When I was about a year old, an airplane flew over our farm. He held me up, pointed to the sky, and said "Airplane". I repeated the word and have been fascinated with anything that flies ever since. I have accomplished far more than I could have expected when I was a country boy in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia flying model airplanes and dreaming of becoming a pilot. I did that and much more.

I have flown airplanes from the J3 Cub that flew at 65 mph to the F86 that let me fly faster than the speed of sound. I have flown aircraft from the diminutive Moody Mite to the gigantic C124. I have flown over a lot of the world from Turkey in the east to Saigon in the west. I helped put the first American into space and conducted wind tunnel tests of all American manned space vehicles up to the Space Shuttle.

I hate to see this great B36 thread taken over by war stories but I really like them. Maybe they should be a separate thread.